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Wednesday, January 9, 2019

My veteran friend emailed me about having a bad time

I got an email from an old friend who flew with Bob and his unit in the
First Cav in Vietnam. He said he was having problems again and didn't
like it, so he had been reading through his old copies of The Post-Traumatic Gazette and they helped a lot. I suggested he might be
having an anniversary reaction to New Year's Day, since people were
killed in the Cav because troops were shooting at the troops on "Hong
Kong" hill and they shot back. Then he remembered we are coming up on the anniversary of one of the pilots being killed, the first one in their tour. Good insight.
One of the most interesting things to me about PTSD is that the reptile
brain, where it resides, can't speak English and can't tell time. It
never knows you have been home for years and are safe, yet it does know
what time of year it is, so you get anniversary reactions. For those of you who don't know, I wrote The Post-Traumatic Gazette for 7 years, and all the newsletters are free online at patiencepress.com.

About Me

I'm the wife of a Vietnam vet, Robert Mason, who wrote the book, Chickenhawk, a memoir of his tour as a helicopter pilot, who came home with PTSD. 51st anniversary on Dec 2. We have been through a lot. Recovering from the War is the book I wrote when we found out about PTSD. I continue to write about it. I am also working at writing fantasy and scifi for young adults and picture books.

Welcome to my Blog on PTSD

My blog is intended to help you find help for yourself, whether it is you or your spouse that has PTSD.I have very decided opinions on what PTSD is, a collection of survivor skills that help you at the time of the trauma but can later become your biggest problems.I am glad to see attempts at resilience training in the military, but I tend to doubt that it actually prevents PTSD, especially since resilience has historically been a code word for workaholism, something psychiatrists tend not to notice.There is no one-size-fits-all treatment for PTSD, and although you may find a treatment which helps with all your most distressing symptoms, I prefer the word remission to the term cure, since as yet there are no 20 or 50 year follow up studies on any treatment. That way, if you find your symptoms returning when there is another war or other trauma, you know that what worked once will work again and you can go for more help.Research has shown that traumatic events are cumulative, starting in childhood, and the effects are worse when human cruelty, neglect, betrayal and indifference are part of it. PTSD is even worse when the institutions which are supposed to help you, practice cruelty, neglect, betrayal and indifference, as is happening a lot these days. It is just as bad as when a parent or spouse traumatizes someone.I will be blogging on things I have seen to be helpful.